I was reminded of this curious “cause” recently when PSS announced that it was distributing federally funded laptops to middle- and high school students. Some parents were not thrilled. They feared that these computers would be another distraction from what their children should be doing in the classroom: reading, memorizing, discussing, learning. There were no laptops when they were kids, some of the parents said, so they were more focused on their studies. Give the kids laptops and Internet connection and they’ll end up chatting with each other through Yahoo Messenger, swapping smileys, lol’s, lmfao’s while posting Facebook status messages like “John Doe is pulling up his pants and saying no to crack” — or nasty comments on the Variety’s online edition.
Restricting the kids’ access to computers, however, is not good parenting but an exercise in nostalgia. Whether we like it or not, today’s children are growing up in a world where the Internet is rapidly becoming the primary source of entertainment and information. Technology will continue to improve, which will make it easier and cheaper for everyone, including kids, to go online. Soon all homes, work places, senior citizen centers, motorists, pedestrians and, yes, schools will be connected with each other in cyberspace. This is an irreversible trend.
If education is supposed to prepare our kids for the world, then that world is now forever wired. It is therefore in the interest of educators to ensure that their students are not only well-versed with the Internet (they already are), but are also skilled in finding information they need to learn, how to spot bogus “facts” and “data,” and why they have to stay away from certain sites.
In the fall of 2007, when Amazon.com launched its “e-book,” the Kindle, most of my literary friends believed that people would never warm up to such a high-tech abomination. We prefer to hold a book made of paper, with pages you can turn and even smell, whose passages we can underline, with margins where we can write our comments, our thoughts. We don’t like to stare at a screen, especially if it’s not a TV, for hours and hours. But by “we” we meant our generation, and the generation of our parents and grandparents.
Our kids, however, are used to staring at screens: the computer, the cell phone, the iPod. If ever some of them would want to read books, Kindle should be their first choice. They’re wired already. They have e-mail accounts. They text each other. They’re on Facebook. They “download” movies, music and videos. They post videos on YouTube. They take down notes with their laptops. They read whatever it is they want or need to read on their computers.
Soon, there won’t be CDs and DVDs anymore. We’ll be ordering digital versions of songs or movies online. (It’s already happening.) Books, newspapers, magazines will go the same route. A library will become a museum for printed editions and will have to provide more computers for the reading public.
This is our children’s world. And we are not preparing them for it by telling them that computers and surfing the ‘Net are bad for their intellect. Which is probably true. Nothing beats reading a “real” book. Texters mangle the language. A lot of kids, moreover, no longer learn handwriting, which experts say is a “building block to learning.”
But then again, as I’ve pointed out on this same page before, Socrates, too, didn’t like the then-new technology called a “book.” He believed it would sap the youth’s ability to memorize their ancestors’ lengthy oral stories and epic poems.
Throughout history, similar complaints were made against the arrival of any new technology, primarily because each new invention signaled the end of a particular generation’s era. But that’s how it is. There will always be new technology, which will require abandoning old skills — and acquiring new ones.
Parent and educators should be asking themselves: Am I preparing my children and my students to live in their world — or mine?
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